By Caroline Dipping 05:00a.m. May 7, 2014, updated 06:35p.m. May 6, 2014

Jane Dumas grew up in a dirt-floored hut on a backcountry ranch, hauling water by the bucket and eating honey and manzanita berries for treats. A member of East County’s Jamul Band of Kumeyaay Indians, she spoke Kumeyaay and Spanish before learning English in a one-room school in Potrero, where she was ostracized by classmates for being a “savage.”

From her mother, a revered medicine woman and midwife, she absorbed everything there was to know about native plants and their power to heal. Mrs. Dumas made it her mission to share what she learned at her mother’s side, to teach the language and culture of her people, and to advocate for the Native American community of San Diego.

“Her whole life was dedicated to helping everybody, not just the natives,” said her grandson Brian Dumas. “She felt it was just as important to show the white man why we do what we do. She was a teacher right up to her last day.”
Mrs. Dumas died of natural causes on May 3 at a nursing home in Lakeside. The tribal elder was 89.

“Jane was a well-respected member of our Tribe, and was known throughout San Diego County and the State of California,” read a statement issued by the Jamul Indian Village Tribal Council. “Jane’s knowledge and expertise of the Kumeyaay culture will be greatly missed.”

Born Jane Thing on June 25, 1924, on Smith Ranch in Barrett, she was one of five children born to Ambrosia Thing and Isabelle Cuero.

Standing barely 5 feet tall, Mrs. Dumas was a giant in San Diego’s American Indian community. She was one of the very few elders from a reservation to make a mark in San Diego’s so-called urban Indian community — people of Navajo, Lakota or other tribal descent. And she was revered for her vast knowledge of plants, herbs and ancient remedies.

“Even when I travel, I take the time to look at what’s in the ground,” she said in a 2002 interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune. “It all has a good, warm feeling. It’s almost like a human feeling they pass on to you, the plants.”
For decades, Mrs. Dumas spoke in classrooms and at public events, sharing knowledge of Kumeyaay culture, language and medicine. She taught ethnobotany classes through Cuyamaca College and the Kumeyaay Community College on the Sycuan Indian Reservation.

“She is one of those resources you will miss like a library burning down,” said Richard Carrico, professor of Indian studies at San Diego State University. “You can never exhaust what she knew and it wasn’t from her not wanting to share it. She is really going to be missed.”

In 1981, she helped found the San Diego American Indian Health Center, working there until 2000 as a traditional medicine specialist. Since 1986, she was a board member for the Indian Human Resource Center.

In 2002, she was among the first women nominated for induction into the San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame. On Oct. 1, 2004, the city of San Diego honored her by proclaiming it Jane Dumas Day. In 2005, the California State Society of Daughters of the American Revolution named her its American Indian of the Year for her social and cultural efforts on behalf of her Kumeyaay band and other American Indians.

In 2006, a flag representing the Kumeyaay-Diegueño Nation was flown for the first time at Cabrillo National Monument in Point Loma. The idea for the flag came from Mrs. Dumas, who had prayed in her native language and blessed the opening ceremonies for years at the annual Cabrillo Festival.

“What I remember about her is that she was small in stature, but very large in influence,” said Chet Barfield, a former San Diego Union-Tribune staff writer who covered Indian affairs. “She was very quiet, but pretty much wherever she was, everybody in the room knew that Jane Dumas was the elder to be respected.”

In the 2002 Union-Tribune article, Dumas said she didn’t consider herself a healer or a great leader, just someone who knew the old ways and hoped they wouldn’t be forgotten. When asked if she could be called a teacher, she responded, “That’s what they say. I call it sharing.”

Mrs. Dumas is survived by a son, Dale Dumas, of San Felipe, Baja California; a brother, Adolph Thing, of Jacumba; three grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by her daughter, Daleane Adams, in 2009, and her husband of 44 years, Cleo Dumas, in 1985.

A rosary will be at 7 p.m. Friday followed by an all-night wake at St. Francis of Xavier Church, 14191 Highway 94, Jamul. Burial services will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at the church.